The Poets' Wives (6 page)

‘Let’s continue with her for the time to come at least and the house is brighter with her in it,’ he adds as he tries to squeeze away the pain in his toes.

So the house is brighter for her presence and in his head she has become part of his painted world of innocence. I tell myself that I need all my patience and I must bide my time and wait until opportunity presents itself but as the day slips into night my spirits sink into a lifeless despair and the bed we sleep in seems suddenly bigger and filled with a greater space between us than I have ever known. And I am afflicted by dreams where once more I no longer have the ability to read and when they exchange letters every day their content is hidden from me. It is wakening one night from such a dream that I hear the door of her room open and close and on impulse I rise and put on as few clothes that are needed to render me respectable and then I follow her into the street. The moon is fat and pocked of face and the night feels strange, transformed into something I do not recognise, and there is a throb of life that matches nothing I know from the day but feels almost as if it is a living creature pressing against the bars of its cage.

I stay as close as I dare when she crosses New Road and enters Apollo Gardens where a series of tents and makeshift dwellings offer every type of licentious entertainment that the fallen man might desire. In the light of day it seems a sorry enough place where the rickety shelters look as if they might be dispatched by the first angry storm but at night with their smoking oil lights that throw giant silhouettes against canvas walls and with both the wail of fiddles and human voices it takes on the appearance of Hell itself. Suddenly I am approached by a man who lurches drunkenly towards me and asks me what he must pay for his pleasure and only his unsureness of foot allows me to evade his clutches. The pathways are mucky from earlier rain and in the deeper puddles there is a sheen of moonlight and I am frightened and think of turning back but a greater need drives me on. Two soldiers in uniform stand in the doorway of a tent with tankards in their hands and drink a raucous curse on Bonaparte. I hear their foul jeers as I pass them and then I see her enter the largest tent and she seems able to move through the paths unseen and undisturbed like a shadow.

I start to fear that I am following her into some world from where I shall never return and in every corner of the tent I see faces that look as if they would cut your throat for the meagre contents of your purse. A pile of empty oyster shells glitter like watching eyes. And with every second that passes I feel as if I have entered one of Will’s depictions of Hell and the sulphurous darkness smoulders like the very worst of nightmares. And whether real or imaginary it feels as if the colours of this world are painted deepest purple and black then streaked with a violent crimson. I pull a shawl over my head as if this might offer protection and go to the side of the tent where a badly sewn slash allows me to glimpse inside without being seen and she is sitting at an upturned barrel that serves as a table and which is surrounded by a group of men and women who have obviously taken a great deal of strong drink and whose very laughter sounds obscene. Then she is curled in one of the men’s laps and garlanding his neck with her arms until he nuzzles his face into her partly uncovered breasts. And I shudder uncontrollably for a second as I imagine that the man who is invited to take such liberties will slowly lift his head and I shall see Will’s face. There is a sickness in my stomach and then I watch the man lead her through a narrow doorway at the back of the tent and into the night. I think of following but know it serves no further purpose and so hugging the shadows as much as possible I make my way back home.

When I enter the house Will is standing with a candle and there is apprehension and agitation in his face. He stares at the mud on my shoes and the prints they have left on the floor.

‘Where in the name of pity have you been, Catherine? And where is Lizzie?’

‘Where is Lizzie? On her back plying the trade that is most familiar to her and at which she is best. Plying it at this very moment.’

‘That can’t be true,’ he says, the insistence in his voice telling me that I have lied to him. ‘Why do you say these evil things?’

‘Because it’s as true as I am standing here – I have seen it with my own eyes. And you would have seen it too if you hadn’t allowed your eyes to be blinded.’

‘It’s false!’ he shouts as I have heard him shout about so many other things.

He starts to look past me towards the door and I can tell that even now he is weighing my words for their truth and the continuing doubt in his eyes stirs my anger like never before so when he says, ‘I must go and bring her home,’ and starts towards the door I lose all control and hear myself shout, ‘Go to your little chicken whore and I’ll not be here when you return! Bring her again into this house and I shall be gone for ever. I mean it, William.’

He hesitates, his gaze torn between me and the door behind, then says, ‘What will become of her?’

‘I have no answer for that but I know that if you bring her back into this house what exists between us will be destroyed for ever, so now you have to leave off thinking about her and think about us if you have any care about our life together.’

‘But what if she comes to harm?’

‘She has made her choice and there’s nothing more that you can do for her. What we tried to give her was never enough for her. I knew that from the start and if her plans had been allowed to take root she would have taken my place in your bed.’

‘How can that be true, Kate?’ he says, shaking his head in denial.

‘Look at me, Will, look at me now and tell me that you never felt the impulse.’

He turns his head away and so we both have our answer. The house suddenly gives one of those inexplicable groans where everything seems to shift a little as if burdened with too much weight but I feel no mercy for him even though I see the anguish in his face.

‘It’s a poor prophet, William, that can’t see his own future, that lets his will be bent to that of one so unworthy.’

He stands like a child and the candle flutters a little from the door’s draught so his face is shadowed and flecked.

‘What must I do?’ he asks, looking at me for the first time with the spark of love in his eyes.

‘Lock the door, Will. That’s what you must do. Lock it and don’t open it no matter how loud the knocking. In the morning she can collect her things. Now come to bed and hold me tightly so that all my doubts fade away and everything is mended and made new.’

He does what I ask and when the hammering starts he tries to press it out of his senses by burrowing his head into my empty womb and after a while the knocking is replaced by curses that seem to flap about our heads like bats until eventually silence settles and there is only the steady beating of our hearts.

I do not know what happens to her – in the morning he tells her she must go while I stay in our room and it is only years later that he tells me he tried to find a place for her in Lambeth’s Asylum for Girls where such as her are trained for domestic service or to work in some of the new manufactories that need labour. I do not think it is a place where she would take kindly to the discipline and in my mind at least, and although I never say it, I consider it more likely that she joins with others such as her at Charing Cross. And that is a place I never venture for fear of encountering her.

But even then things are not fully mended between us at first and I cannot so easily forgive him for all that has happened so our bed is cold even when I am mended and although he is solicitous and kind he gives his passion to his work and during this time I do not help him so often and he does not choose to show me what he has done except one morning when I am slow to rise there is a poem on the table and I know he has left it for me to see:

My Pretty Rose Tree

A flower was offerd to me:

Such a flower as May never bore.

But I said I’ve a Pretty Rose-tree,

And I passed the sweet flower o’er.

Then I went to my Pretty Rose-tree:

To tend her by day and by night.

But my Rose turned away with jealousy:

And her thorns were my only delight.

I take it and read it again and then I go to the window and look out where the river glides between houses. At first I am angry because I should not have had to turn away with jealousy and what thorns prick him now count as nothing to the pain inflicted on me. There are fishing smacks and cargo boats crowding the river that every day grows busier with the city’s business. I wonder what distant sea it flows to. I have never seen the sea. Then I set the poem back exactly where I found it and go about the business of the day.

All our long future days together are filled with his visions and wondrous revelations and surely this is a portend to some miraculous event. I ask Mr Blake in a whisper if he thinks it is a sign that we are in the final days but he doesn’t reply and stands as if mesmerised as all around us people are halted motionless, their upturned faces struck by a sense of wonder. And it is as if one of his pictures has been made real and engraved on the night sky and the very colours are like the ones he favours and for a moment I wonder if it is possible that the Divinity of his imagination has rendered this real. Or perhaps it is God’s punishment on a people who have turned their faces away as they do from all those who are prophets. The city’s dogs are barking and whimpering and those children still at play in the street are frozen into stillness and some are crying with fear.

Seemingly almost motionless at first then a ball of fire tinted with blue and red so intense that it almost burns the eyes as it moves across the night sky. And its brightness makes shadows of us all as in its wake trails a great flaring tail of orange flame that breaks into smaller pieces to a rumble of thunder. And when it is gone people are left confused and silent for a few moments before they burst into animated argument about what they have seen. And some of them call to Mr Blake to explain but he simply smiles at them and says over and over again, ‘The stars throw down their spears,’ and no matter how hard they press him he answers nothing else. Then when we return to our home he dances a little jig of joy and takes both my hands and makes me dance with him to some music that only he can hear and I try to follow the rhythm of his steps until eventually he collapses on his chair.

‘You’re right, Kate, surely it is a sign,’ he almost shouts and his eyes burn bright and he tells me of all his ideas and plans for another new work that he must undertake and he is filled to the brim with excitement and some of his words I follow and some are lost to me but I believe all of them have the deepest meaning. And that night he labours through all the hours as if the Holy Spirit is upon him and I sit by his side and watch what energy and passion shape everything he does and he speaks little but sometimes stops and with his inky hands takes mine in his and then raises them to his lips. And in the morning when he is spent I bring him drink and bread and when he lays his head down in slumber on the engraving table I make him stand and then lead him to the bedroom where I undress him and as a mother with a child help him into his nightshirt and then leave him to sleep, going about the house for many hours on tiptoe so as not to disturb him. Then after a while I hear his voice call my name and when I enter he beckons me to him and it is the richest and most wondrous of times and his words that whisper about fire flowing through the sky and distant stars hang like pearls from my ears and when he tells me I am his heart’s desire he burns so bright that I am almost frightened I shall be consumed by the flames.

In the days that follow he is tender but quiet and I do not know what spins inside his head but then in time he grows restless and wanders about the house and sometimes he is in conversation with those I cannot see. And once he gets into a fight in the street with a man who is beating a horse and claiming his ownership allows him to do whatever is his wish and for a moment I think that William will tear the stick from his hand and turn it on the man. I have to drag him away and then everything that the city has to offer seems destined to anger him, such as when we pass a house that has songbirds held in cages attached to its outside walls. And on Blackfriars Road he rails against Albion Mill and exclaims in a loud voice that all can hear that man is not a machine. As we walk he speaks of Christ going into the temple and clearing out the moneylenders and I fear he will do some violence to anyone who runs counter to what presses so hard upon him. I try to calm him but it feels as if the earlier joy at what we witnessed in the sky has dissipated and in its place has slipped an aching dissatisfaction with everything the world has to offer. It is then that I fear his dark star will be what shines most brightly in his firmament and he asks me constantly to be with him, either when he sits at his table but where he does little work, or when he walks the city at all hours of the day and night. And there is a restlessness that will not give him respite except when I read the Bible to him or force him into a stillness through the tightness of my embrace.

Once in an attempt to divert him I persuade him to view an exhibition of mechanical toys and curiosities and in the back room of a shop we see a soldier marching, a bear playing a drum, a fiddle player, and a trickster playing hunt the dice but in truth all are a little tawdry and their cleverness of invention makes little impression on him. Then one day as we take the bridge across the river a man hands us a bill that we think is for some miracle cure or foolish entertainment that springs up everywhere as if the city must constantly entertain its citizens with what is base and ignoble. But Will stops to read it and it invites ‘those desirous of beholding the wonders of nature’ to view the Royal Menagerie at the Tower of London. And for a second I think Will might remonstrate with the hawker of these printed bills and tell him, as I have heard him tell others who imprison a creature which has the right to live unchained, that they commit a crime against Heaven. But instead of rage he says nothing and hands me the paper to pocket and then we proceed with our walk and we pass the Royal Academy school where Will tells me about his student days and then journey to Westminster Abbey where not much more than a boy he practised drawing amidst the tombs and effigies. He grows quiet again as he looks about his old haunts and shows me the things he drew and I start to believe that he is considering the path his life has followed since those days and I do not know whether those young dreams he harboured are replaced by better ones or if it feels to him as if they are broken into fragments and trampled over. The Abbey is cold to the eye and to the body with its marble and stone and neither candle or gilt can stop me shivering and I am glad when he takes my arm and we return to the sunlight.